One of the perpetual criticisms of solar power is the high cost versus traditional fossil fuel sources or nuclear power. To be fair, these criticisms are largely true. However, critics should keep an open mind about solar power as an energy source in the long run as exciting research is being done that could dramatically boost efficiencies and increase the power yield of solar cells, decreasing deployment costs.

The latest breakthrough in quantum dots comes from the lab of Professor Vladimir V. Mitin at the University at Buffalo, New York. Professor Mitin's new quantum dots harvest light in the infrared spectrum -- often underutilized in solar cells -- complementing existing photovoltaics.

But his special quantum dots do something more. They're pre-doped with a negative charge, which helps them repel electrons. Why would you want to repel electrons from your quantum dots?

Well, imagine you have all your quantum dots exposed to visible light and they're busy "harvesting" the energy from the infrared portion of that light. This "harvest" occurs by the infrared-range photons transferring their energy to an electron in one of the nanocrystal's atoms. The electron is excited and "jumps" out of its orbit, joining a free flow current stream of electrons from various quantum dots. The current flow is driven by a potential difference.

But imagine if one of the electrons in the stream passes by a quantum dot and sees one of the "holes" left when an excited electron departed. It can sometimes fill in that empty space, in a phenomenon called recombination. This is a bad thing, as all of a sudden your electrons go from producing useful current to malingering around in your nanocrystal.

By doping your nanocrystal, you're putting a lot of negative charge in it. So even if your nanocrystal sheds some of its electron load, it's still has a lot of negatively charged electrons. Like repels like, so this means electrons in the current stream tend to avoid the nanocrystals and recombination drops.

These special doped nanocrystal quantum dots are known as quantum dots with built-in-charge (Q-BICs).

An electron micrograph of quantum dots (dark bumps in right most image) and an artist's sketch of a layered quantum dot cell (right images) are seen in this picture from an earlier Professor Mitin paper. [Image Source: Vladimir V. Mitin/University at Buffalo]

Professor Mitin didn't do this work alone. The work was done by his core team, which also consisted of Andrei Sergeev and Nizami Vagidov, faculty members in UB's electrical engineering department; Kitt Reinhardt of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research; and John Little and advanced nanofabrication expert Kimberly Sablon of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory.

Professor Mitin isn't revealing the exact chemical stew used in the nanocrystalline Q-BICs, as he and his fellow professors have filed for a provisional patent on their work. But his past studies [PDF] indicate that they're using indium arsenic nanodots, for at least some of their work.

III. What's Next

Professors Mitin, Sergeev, and Vagidov are joining together to found a startup company to market the solar cells, which they say can increase the conversion efficiency by 45 percent over traditional designs, between harvesting the infrared and fighting recombination of the infrared-derived current. The new company is called OPtoElectronic Nanodevices LLC. (OPEN LLC.)

Eventually solar cells will likely make heavy use of quantum dots, as these little nanostructures allow high efficiency capture of targeted portions of the spectrum -- efficiency so high that it would violate the laws of physics if the nanocrystal was a traditional semiconductor. By mixing nanodots, a cell could capture most of the visible light spectrum. This latest development -- Q-BIC -- adds one more tool to improve such a design.

Solar may not win out in the long term with viable alternatives like nuclear fusion and algal biofuels on the way. But developing efficient solar power will be a critical step for mankind in the creation of self-sustaining colonies on alien moons, asteroids, and worlds -- environments that often lack significant quantities of carbon and water (a source of fusion fuel) -- but that have an abundance of silicon and other mineral resources.

If we start capturing large majorities of concentrated sunlight (photons) in various spectrums, will plants and other lifeforms suffer from lack of this natural sunlight exposure?

I also wondered to a somwhat lesser extent if we start created large wind farms at various altitudes, will we be hindering and dissrupting the natural windcycles that carry hot and warm air to various climates? Don't we risk potentially putting to much of a 'load' on these systems? Systems meaning the wind and sunlight.

I know that's somewhat out there, but I'm still curious what the effects would be.

I don't think our current effect is even close to the scale of the globe. But I wonder too where this would end up if someday we had millions of windmills and solar panels covering every village, town and city.

I also wonder what the effect of driving 1 (or 5 someday) billion cars can have - not just emissions but the combined heat released. Does it even register on the scale of heat from sunlight absorbed by the planet? Is it measurable compared to the change due to greenhouse gases?

Now get all 1 billion cars to accelerate from 0 to 60 pointing East at exactly the same time. Did the rotational speed of the planet feel a nudge?